[APWG] Stories needed about "Mishaps with use of weed infested sandand gravel"

[Bill Stringer]

Wayne raises an important companion issue, the movement of propagules 
on equipment.

We recently had an experience in the Francis Marion National Forest, 
near Charleston.  We found a sizeable outbreak of cogongrass 
(Imperata cylindrica).  This grass is an exotic invasive of 
tremendous proportions in the Gulf Coast states (see 
http://www.cogongrass.org/ ).
It is increasing in Georgia, and we have been on the lookout for it 
in SC for several years.

The infestation we found in the Francis Marion apparently started in 
a Forest Service road ditch.  For pix see 
(http://everettj.people.cofc.edu/cogongrass.html) The USFS contracts 
with outside folks to do road maintenance,
and we suspect it came from the outside on a road grader, as this is 
the only infestation on the entire forest and for
many miles around on private land.   Our Dept of Plant Industry has 
been on top of this infestation with a control program,
and we are breathing a little easier.

Bill Stringer

William C. Stringer
President-emeritus
South Carolina Native Plant Society
<http://www.scnps.org/>www.scnps.org

PO Box 491
Norris, SC 29667

Clemson University
Entomology, Soils and Plant Science
864 656 3527
bstrngr at clemson.edu


"Go my Sons, burn your books.  Buy yourself stout shoes.  Get away to 
the mountains, the valleys, the shores of the seas, the deserts, and 
the deepest recesses of the earth.  In this way and no other will you 
find true knowledge of things and their properties."

Peter Severinus, 16th. century Dane educator

At 06:43 PM 4/28/2010, Wayne Tyson wrote:
>This sounds like a subject of broad interest to this list. I, for 
>one, would like to know more about the details.
>
>The whole issue of dispersal and dispersal agents is a long one, and 
>isn't necessarily limited to "mineral material mishaps" (whatever 
>that means) alone, but can involve aspects of movement other than 
>such things as sand and gravel movement, such as propagules hitching 
>a ride on vehicles (e.g. Brassica tournefortii and countless other species).
>
>While it would be a "no-brainer" to "certify" incoming material 
>loads, some might let their imaginations run wild. One thought might 
>be to certify donor sites. Many sand and gravel pits are, however, 
>first-rate "weed" sites, and those in drainages are likely to 
>contain propagules from the watersheds above them.
>
>Scale and application scenarios come to mind too, as would the 
>functional and economic trade-offs involved in getting to the point, 
>which presumably is to prevent the transmission and establishment of 
>alien or pestiferous organisms.
>
>Washing down bulldozers and other off-highway vehicles before they 
>cut so-called "firebreaks" or venture beyond might be an option, but 
>in some interpretations might also be an invitation to protest. As a 
>matter of actual fact, this sort of thing might be a tempest in a 
>teapot, a solution to a major problem, or an infinite range of 
>possibilities in between.
>
>I hope Hutten will share the study design and results with the group.
>
>WT
>
>______________________________________________



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/apwg_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20100429/cfd013dd/attachment.html>